On a bright spring morning in March 1995, millions of commuters entered Tokyo's busy underground system, unaware that five bags filled with liquid nerve agent had been left on trains by members of a doomsday cult. The packages leaked, releasing toxic fumes that struck victims down within seconds, leaving them choking, vomiting, and in some cases blinded or paralysed. Thirteen people died and at least 5,800 were injured in five coordinated attacks on three train lines. The toxin was sarin, a nerve agent originally developed by the Nazis, and the attack remains the worst domestic terror incident in Japanese history.
The perpetrators were Aum Shinrikyo, a religious group whose name means 'supreme truth'. Founded in the 1980s by Shoko Asahara, it blended Hindu and Buddhist beliefs with apocalyptic Christian prophecy. Asahara declared himself both Christ and the first 'enlightened one' since Buddha. The group gained official religious status in Japan in 1989 and attracted tens of thousands of members worldwide, with Asahara speaking at universities and writing books. Many followers were elite university students, drawn by the promise of a more meaningful life in a society marked by academic and career pressure.
Aum gradually turned into a paranoid doomsday cult, convinced that the world would soon collapse into World War Three and that only its members would survive. It became increasingly violent, kidnapping, injuring and killing opponents, and experimenting with chemical and biological agents. In the months after the subway attack, the group made several failed attempts to release hydrogen cyanide in various stations. The atrocity shocked Japan, which prides itself on low crime rates, and raised questions about police failures to investigate earlier allegations of criminal activity by the group. The novelist Haruki Murakami later examined the attack in his non-fiction book 'Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche', based on interviews with 60 victims.
After years on death row, cult leader Shoko Asahara was put to death on 6 July, along with several followers. In total, 13 members were sentenced to death for their roles in the attack. The last to be tried was Katsuya Takahashi, arrested in June 2012 after 17 years on the run; he received a life sentence. Another member, Makoto Hirata, was jailed in 2014 for the abduction of a 68-year-old man and involvement in two bomb attacks.
The group went underground after the 1995 attack but did not disappear. It renamed itself Aleph, while a smaller splinter group, Hikari no Wa (Circle of Rainbow Light), was formed in 2007 by former spokesman Fumihiro Joyu, who claimed to have distanced his followers from worship of Asahara. Aum Shinrikyo is designated a terrorist organisation in the United States and many other countries, but Aleph and Hikari no Wa remain legal in Japan, albeit classified as 'dangerous religions' subject to heightened surveillance. Estimates suggest they have about 1,500 followers between them, with numbers slowly growing.
The cult also operated in former Soviet states after the collapse of the USSR. In March 2016, Montenegro expelled 58 foreigners suspected of association with Aum Shinrikyo, including four from Japan, 43 from Russia, seven from Belarus, three from Ukraine, and one from Uzbekistan. A month later, Russian authorities raided 25 properties linked to the group, which is illegal in Russia and is believed to have up to 30,000 followers there.
